theatre career when he paid my mother to get rid of me before I was born?’
Just like he’d tried to pay Kat to keep away once the news had first broken of her existence. Where had her father been when she’d needed a father? How many times during her childhood had she prayed for a dad? Someone to provide for her. Someone to protect her. Someone to love her.
Someone.
Richard hadn’t even had the decency to come to see her face-to-face, but had sent his arrogant, up-himself lawyer Flynn Carlyon.
‘You’re being unnecessarily stubborn,’ Flynn said.
Unnecessarily? Of course it was necessary. Her pride was necessary. It was all she had now her mother was dead. Kat leaned down so the customers at the nearby tables couldn’t hear. ‘Read my lips. N. O. No.’
His hooded gaze went to her mouth, his face so close to hers she could smell his aftershave, a citrus blend with an undertone of something else, something that reminded her of a cool, dark pine forest where secrets lurked in the shifting shadows. He had recently shaved but she could see every tiny dot of stubble along his lean jaw and around his nose and mouth, the signal of potent male hormones surging through his blood.
His eyes dipped to the open V of her shirt. Only the top two buttons were undone, revealing little more than the base of her neck, but the heat in his gaze made her feel as if she was standing there bare breasted. She straightened as if someone had fisted the back of her shirt and pulled her upright.
Do. Not. Look. At. His. Mouth. Kat chanted it mentally while her eyes continued their traitorous feasting on the contours of his lips. He was smiling again as if he knew exactly the effect he had on her. How could a man she hated so much have such a gorgeous mouth? He had the sort of mouth you could only describe as sinful. Smoking-hot, sex-up-against-the-kitchen-bench sinful. Sex-with-the-curtains-wide-open sinful. The upper lip was straight across the top, but the lower lip more than made up for it. It was full, sensual. The midpoint in perfect alignment with the sexy shallow cleft in his chin.
The only reason she was obsessing about his mouth was because she was doing ‘Winter Deep Freeze’ with her best friend, Maddie Evans. Their celibacy pact had started in November and, with only a month to go, Kat was determined to win. She had to prove a point, not just to her best friend, but also to herself. No way was she going to play out the script of her mother’s life. Bad date after bad date. Sex that scratched an itch but left filthy finger marks on the fabric of her soul.
Who said Kat couldn’t go three months without sex?
She could. And she damn well would.
One of the customers tried to move past, bumping against Kat so she had to suck in her stomach and press herself against Flynn’s table. The brush of his trouser leg on her knee sent a lightning zap of heat through her body. Hot. Searing. Scorching. So scorching she expected to look down and see a singed and smoking hole in her thick black tights.
She stepped back once the customer had gone, pen poised pointedly. ‘Espresso? Water no ice?’
‘He’s your only living parent,’ Flynn said.
Kat sent him a look that would have frozen mercury. ‘So? With relatives like him, lead me to the nearest orphanage. I’m checking in.’
Something moved in his gaze as quickly as a camera-shutter click. But then his lazily slanted smile came back. ‘Are you going to get my coffee?’
‘Are you going to take no for an answer?’
His eyes beneath those dark, winged brows roved her lips. Did he feel the same flicker of animal attraction deep and low in his belly? Kat could feel it now. The pulse of lust thrumming in her blood every time his dark eyes trapped hers, as if he too were thinking of what it would feel like to have her stripped naked and pinned beneath his body.
Or against the kitchen bench.
Be still her heart, her pulse, her giddy-with-excitement girly bits.
Another customer came past, but this time Kat turned so her back was to Flynn. Big mistake. She could sense his gaze on her bottom, burning through the layer of her boring black uniform to the satin and lace secrets beneath. She turned and carefully masked her features, but even so she could feel the warmth glowing in her cheeks.
‘What are you doing for dinner this evening?’
Kat put her hands on her hips, anchoring her resolve in case it took it upon itself to quit its shift. ‘I suppose this is a rarity for you? A woman actually having the willpower to say no to you?’
The glint in his eye made something in her stomach swoop. ‘Nothing I like more than a challenge. The harder, the better.’
Joe came up carrying a tray of coffees. ‘Kathy, are you working the floor or flirting with the customers?’
‘Sorry, Mr Peruzzi,’ Kat said. ‘This customer has a...a complicated order.’
‘Tables seven and ten are waiting for their bills,’ Joe said. ‘And tables two and eight need clearing and resetting. I’m running a café, not a freaking dating agency.’
Kat smiled sweetly even though her back teeth were glued together. ‘There isn’t a man inside this café I would be even remotely tempted to date.’
Joe hustled past and Flynn said, ‘Would you be remotely tempted to serve them some coffee?’
She held his mocking look with steely intent. ‘You won’t win this, Mr Carlyon. I don’t care how many jobs you make me lose. I will not be told what to do.’
He leaned back in his chair as if he had all the time in this world and the next. ‘By the way, you were great in that toilet-paper ad,’ he said. ‘Very convincing.’
Kat could feel her back molars grinding down to her mandible. At this rate, her dental hygienist would be charging a search fee. The only thing more humiliating than doing a job like that toilet-paper gig was having your worst enemy see it. ‘So, just the coffee, or would you like a full breakfast to clog your arteries?’
He gave a low, deep chuckle that made the backs of her knees shiver. ‘I’ll have some cake.’
Kat frowned. It was seven thirty in the morning. Who ate cake at that hour? ‘Cake?’
‘Yep.’ He winked at her. ‘And I’m going to eat it too.’
* * *
‘What was that all about?’ Meg asked when Kat came back to the servery. ‘You’re so red I could cook table four’s buckwheat pancakes on your cheeks.’
‘I swear to God I’m going to explode if I have to go anywhere near that man,’ Kat said. ‘I seriously do not get what women see in him. So what if he’s good looking? He’s an arrogant jerk.’
‘I think he’s gorgeous.’ Meg’s expression had that whole star-struck thing going on. ‘He has such dark-brown eyes you can’t tell where his pupils begin and end.’
Kat got out a large slice of devil’s food cake and liberally coated it with cream. ‘There,’ she said. ‘That should fix him. If that doesn’t give him a heart attack, nothing will.’
‘I
